[grobdriver]

And so we come full circle - to smooth bore weapons.
I guess even a sabot round would be spun by the rifling... unless the projectile were disassociated from the sabot casing via (real tiny) ball bearings.

Heh.

[Gaffer]

IIRC, the sabot, at least in an M-1 Abrahms isn’t even formed until striking the target. The entire round could be considered a sabot, I guess, but the killing part comes on impact.

[Joe 6-pack]

"And so we come full circle - to smooth bore weapons. I guess even a sabot round would be spun by the rifling... unless the projectile were disassociated from the sabot casing via (real tiny) ball bearings."

The original M1 Abrams had the same M68 105mm rifled cannon as the M60A3.

The M1A1/M1A2 upgraded to the Rheinmetall M256 120mm smoothbore (also used on the Leopard 2 and the ROK K1A1). Spin-stabilizing (i.e. "rifling") a projectile at the velocities of the 120mm sabot round would actually result in the projectile veering in flight in the direction of the spin, so designers went with fin stabilization and a smoothbore cannon. The sabots do in fact, discard in flight...